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Collection-level records
History
Some Accredited museums (or multi-site services covering a number of museums) have shared with MDS a brief history of the collections in their care. These collection histories mostly come from the museums’ collection development policies, though they are no longer a mandatory section of the policies required by the Museum Accreditation Scheme.
Collection Overview
Accredited museums (or multi-site services covering a number of museums) are required to have a collection development policy that includes a brief overview of the scope and strengths of the collections in their care. Collection overviews are an incredibly useful starting point for anyone who wants to navigate the nation’s museum holdings, and we are very grateful to all those museums that have shared their overviews with MDS. In some cases, we have included overviews from a legacy dataset called ‘Cornucopia’.
CloseObject records in MDS
This figure is the number of datasets currently in MDS, rather than the number of museums. This is because some datasets come from multi-site services. For example, Norfolk Museum Service has contributed a single dataset, but this includes records about items held in the service’s eleven branch museums. On our Object search landing page, you can see the number of Accredited museums represented in these datasets.
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Accredited Museum
These museums meet the nationally-agreed standards of the UK Museum Accreditation Scheme run by Arts Council England, Museums Galleries Scotland, NI Museums Council and the Welsh Government. In the case of multi-site services, the individual branch museums are Accredited, but the overarching service is usually not. Eg Yorkshire Museums Trust is responsible for three Accredited museums, but is not itself Accredited.
Designated Collection
The Designation Scheme, run by Arts Council England, recognises cultural collections of outstanding importance held in non-national museums, libraries and archives across England. There are over 160 Designated collections, but only the museum ones are included in our database here.
Recognised Collection
The Museums Galleries Scotland Recognition Scheme includes more than fifty Recognised Collections of National Significance, some spread across more than one museum. Here we count the number of museums containing parts of those collections, which is why the figure displayed here is higher than that quoted on the MGS website. There is currently no equivalent scheme for Wales or Northern Ireland.
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